Sam Smith - Love Goes ⅖
The first thing you hear on ‘Love Goes’ is that Smith actually enunciates their words on the opening track ‘Young’ even though it's more or less acapella, just a lone vocal with some treatment. Could this be that turning point? Will they be singing in a clear voice for once?
Well sort of, they are singing a tiny bit clearer on this album but they’re still tied to a lot of the usual vocal tricks and treatments that it's a bit of a cloak over those possible singing talents. When they reach the top levels of their range the vocals seem to emigrate to their nose which is deeply off putting.
Musically it's more semi-dance pop territory that we’re straddling. The album is divided between the piano sopathons about heartbreak and the pop numbers as you’d expect, unfortunately it predictably leans into the more self-analytical musings rather than the upbeat numbers. Which may not come as a surprise as the starting place that Smith wrote this album from was one of heartbreak as they’d just split up from their partner but instead of being reflective it comes across as self-pitying and whiny. Themes of heartbreak and unrequited love are absolutely the main building blocks of this record (and his online breakdowns seem a tiny bit bit more understandable, but only a tiny bit)
There’s nothing that holds ‘Love Goes’ up from his previous two albums, the dancier numbers are already sounding dated whilst there’s only so long the slow ‘woe is me’ songs can keep the attention before they become deeply repetitive in tone and content.
Frankly Will Young does it all so much better and with much less whining and more panache and Sam Smith has a lot of reinvention on so many levels needed before they can arrive at that level and if they’re lucky, really lucky, they may even escape becoming a parody of themselves. Which is where they are heading rapidly.
